Michael Melancon

History

Michael Melancon was born and raised in New Orleans, where he also received a BA in history from Loyola University. After various travels, he served in the U.S. Army where he learned to speak Russian and German. After a two year stint in Germany (1968-1970), he visited the USSR and decided to pursue graduate work in Russian history. During the 1970s he worked on his PhD at Indiana University, Bloomington. After a year of study in the USSR as a Fulbright Fellow and International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) Exchange Student at Leningrad State University, he began teaching at New Mexico State University and the University of Hawaii. His teaching career at Auburn began in 1984. His research focuses on aspects of pre-1917 Russian society and on the Russian Revolutions. His most recent book is The Lena Goldfields Massacre and the Crisis of the Late Tsarist State. After extensive research in Russia over recent years, with generous funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, IREX, Kennan Institute, the Hoover Institution, and inside Auburn University, he is writing a history of the Russian Revolution, with a focus on the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party. The Left Socialist Revolutionaries were a radical group that initially allied itself with the Bolsheviks and then opposed Lenin's propensity for proactive violence and abandonment of democratic norms. This study bases itself entirely on formerly inaccessible sources and offers a new interpretation of the Russian Revolutionary phenomenon. His next project will be a history of late-tsarist Russian political culture (1861-1917).

Peter E. Harzem, renowned behavioral psychologist, died peacefully at his home Monday, May 26, 2008, following a long illness. He was 78 years old. A memorial service for him is planned for 11 a.m. on Thursday, May 29, at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Auburn, Ala. The service will be followed by a reception in the parish hall. Dr. Harzem's ashes will be interred at Memorial Park Cemetery in Auburn at a later date.

Dr. Harzem was born around midnight on Dec. 31, 1929, or Jan. 1, 1930, in Istanbul, Turkey. Due to the holidays, his birth wasn't registered until Jan. 5, 1930, which is his official birthday, though he preferred to celebrate it over several days. He was the only child of Sukru and Saime Harzem.

His professional life began in his teens when he became a newspaper reporter in Istanbul. During this time, he also published poetry and short stories. His passion for writing never waned throughout his life, and he was working on another book at the time of his death.

Dr. Harzem moved to London, England, in the 1940s following World War II to attend the university. After his first year, he took work at a hospital as a registered nurse to support himself, eventually becoming a teacher of nursing. A few years later, he received a First Class Honours degree in psychology from the University of London-one of only three out of more than 350 graduates to receive this distinction. He was invited to do graduate work at Oxford, but chose to go to the University of Wales, where he finished his education and joined the faculty, becoming a senior professor and the director of the psychology program. It was there that he met, and ultimately married, Anne Laaja Rausberg. This beautiful and equally intelligent Estonian woman remained the love of his life for more than 44 years, attending and nurturing him until his death. On Sept. 24, 1971, the Harzems welcomed their only child, Emma Elvira-Anne Harzem.

During his 14 or so years at the University of Wales, Dr. Harzem began working with world-renowned figures in psychology and caught the attention of B.F. Skinner, the father of Radical Behaviorism. Dr. Harzem worked with Skinner, explaining how the same data could be manipulated to generate different results, and Skinner made several return visits to Wales, even dining at the Harzem's home.

This led Dr. Harzem to begin lecturing internationally, which he did for the next 40 years, becoming a regular presenter in Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Germany, Estonia, and the United States, among others. Many of his publications have been translated into Italian, Spanish and Japanese, and he served on the editorial boards of professional journals in England, Mexico, Brazil, Spain and the United States. He made many dear and devoted friends in this international community.

Dr. Harzem came to Auburn University in 1978 and was later named Hudson Professor of Psychology, a distinguished position he held until his retirement in 2006. While at Auburn, he established the behavioral division of the psychology department and served as department head for four years. In 1997, Dr. Harzem became a naturalized citizen of the United States at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Ga. President Carter was present and personally congratulated him, saying "I am pleased to have you as a fellow member of the United States."

He belonged to the Rotary Club (twice being named a Paul Harris Fellow), a Buddhist study and meditation group and Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, where he cultivated dear and lasting friendships. Dr. Harzem was an insatiable learner and constant researcher, exploring and writing about many interesting things beyond psychology, most recently studying Buddhism, string theory and the passage of time with regard to intervals between the past and the present.

Dr. Harzem was preceded in death by his father, mother, step-father and grandson, Peter Walter Slyz. He is survived by his wife, Anne; his daughter, Emma; his son-in-law, Yurij Slyz; and his two-week-old granddaughter, Tessa Katherine-Anne Slyz. He also leaves behind a legion of friends in Auburn and around the world.

In lieu of flowers, anyone wishing to make a contribution in his memory can send a donation to East Alabama Medical Center's Cancer Center, in care of the EAMC Foundation, 2000 Pepperell Parkway, Opelika, AL 36801.

John Homayoun Mazaheri was born in Teheran and raised in Iran and in Paris, France. He studied at the Lycée Henri IV in Paris (1965-70), at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (MFA in printmaking, 1976), at the University of Aix-en-Provence (MA in French, 1984), and at Brown University (PhD in French, 1989).

He taught printmaking and French in Teheran in the late 1970s (in college), returned to France in the early 1980s, and moved with his family to the United States in 1984. He taught for several years at the University of Massachusetts/Boston and at Clark University (Worcester, Mass.), before he became assistant-professor of French at Auburn University in 1989. In 1991 he became an American citizen. He has been full-professor since 1999. His publications include a book on the French moralist La Bruyère, two monographs on H. de Balzac (the second one is forthcoming), and many articles on the 17th and the 19th centuries, which have appeared in various scholarly journals in Europe and in the U.S. He is mostly interested in the relationships between Christian theology and literature. He is also active as a visual artist, and participates in juried shows.

Don Wehrs is an Associate Professor who has two books forthcoming. Pre-Colonial Africa in Colonial African Narratives: From Ethiopia Unbound to Things Fall Apart, 1911-1958 (Ashgate) explores the origins of political reflection in twentieth-century African fiction by reading seven narrative representations of pre-colonial African history and society. Islam, Ethics, Revolt: Politics and Piety in Francophone West African and Maghreb Narrative (Lexington) traces novelistic explorations, from the 1950s to the 1990s, of the struggle to craft decolonized forms of Islamic identity within sub-Sahara and North African societies. His essay on Sterne and postcolonial literature and theory appears in The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne (2008); in 2006 he published articles in College Literature and Modern Philology on Shakespeare, ethics, and cognitive science, and will present papers on friendship and rivalry in The Winter's Tale and teaching sacred texts in World Literature courses at the 2007 MLA conference. He is Secretary-Treasurer of the Southern Comparative Literature Association and currently working on book chapters for two collections on Sterne and a book-length project on the relationship between ethical sense and literary signification in Shakespeare, Cervantes, and others. Don Wehrs received his PhD from the University of Virginia. He specializes in novel genre and history, eighteenth-century studies, postcolonial studies, and comparative literature and has published articles in MLN, SEL and ELH.

Carole Zugazaga and Denise Davis-Maye, Social Work

Research Grant Awarded to Study, Eliminate Homelessness in Alabama

Two Social Work professors in the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University, Dr. Carole Zugazaga and Dr. Denise Davis-Maye, have been awarded a $46,000 grant to study mothers and their infant children up to one year old.

Dr. Carole Zugazaga and Dr. Denise Davis-Maye will work with existing data to gather information relating to suicide, depression and murder rates among mothers with infants up to one year old in the state of Alabama. They will then take that data and identify other states with similar statistics to come up with best practices and policies.

The grant was awarded through the Alabama Women’s Commission. The Commission, founded in 1971 by Act of the Alabama Legislature, will use the findings of Zugazaga and Davis-Maye to weigh potential legislation.

“It is an honor for me to have been nominated to be a part of the inaugural Academic Advisory Committee to the Governor's Statewide Interagency Council on Homelessness,” Zugazaga said. “I look forward to serving the State of Alabama in our efforts to first better understand and then to eliminate homelessness in our state.”

The Alabama Women’s Commission exists to generally study the status of women in the state of Alabama and make recommendations to the Governor and Legislature annually. Their primary focus is in the areas of:

• Public and private employment policies and practices
• Labor laws dealing with hours, wages and working conditions
• Legal rights and responsibilities
• Policies and practices with regard to education, counseling and job training
• Citizen volunteers
• Home and community

“The data generated by Drs. Zugazaga and Davis-Maye will have direct and significant implications on policies and practices adopted by the state of Alabama,” Dean Anne-Katrin Gramberg, College of Liberal Arts, said. “This is not a simple task, but I know that these two highly published researchers are up for the challenge.”

Dr. W. David Lewis
Distinguished University Professor of History
(1931-2007)

Dr. W. David Lewis passed away on September 28, 2007.

He was born on June 24, 1931 in Towanda, Pennsylvania.  He took his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Pennsylvania State University, and he completed his Ph.D. at Cornell University in 1961.  He was never slow to point out the glories, past and present, of the Keystone State.

Dr. Lewis came to Auburn in 1971 as the Hudson Professor of History & Engineering.  He founded Auburn’s History of Technology program and pioneered the teaching of Technology & Civilization in the core curriculum.  He also helped found what became the Human Odyssey program, and he was instrumental in the creation of an Honors program that has grown into an Honors College.    It is to Dr. Lewis, more than any other single person, that the department owes its excellence today in the History of Technology.  He was since 1994 a Distinguished University Professor.  Over several decades, David played a critical role in hiring department heads and faculty who have led History and built its reputation.  As Athletic Director Emeritus David Housel wrote, “David was a good man, and I have always thought that in many ways he revolutionized the teaching of history at Auburn."

Dr. Lewis authored or edited thirteen books and published dozens of smaller pieces, as well as giving scores of talks around the globe.  Among his best-known books were acclaimed studies of New York prisons in the early nineteenth century, of Delta Airlines, of Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, and of Eddie Rickenbacker.  His honors and awards are too numerous to mention in full.  He was the Charles A. Lindbergh Professor of Aerospace History at the National Air and Space Museum, and he won the Leonardo da Vinci Medal from the Society for the History of Technology.

Saying that David was enthusiastic about his work is like saying that Mount Everest is high.  He once said that he became involved in the History of Technology through “serendipity,” since it did not exist as an organized field at the time that he attended graduate school.  Early in his career he associated with giants such as Alfred D. Chandler and Melvin Kranzberg, the former a famous historian of business and the latter the recognized founder of the field of History of Technology. Whatever research or teaching David was doing at the moment was the most exciting project ever undertaken.  His friends vividly recall papers that he delivered thirty or forty years ago; they describe him jumping up and down, gesticulating broadly, and generally acting like a man who had discovered the best stories ever and could not wait to tell them.

His friends and colleagues will miss many things about David, but probably his energy and devotion to history most of all.  He remains an example to us all.  Our thoughts are with his wife, Pat, and all of the family.

Michelle Sidler, English

Dr. Michelle Sidler, Associate Professor and Coordinator of Composition, has been at Auburn University since August 2000. In the past few years, she has spearheaded a movement to update the first-year composition curriculum and helped the English Department acquire funding for two new computer classrooms. “Students at Auburn have grown up writing with technology, and computer literacy will be even more vital to their professional and personal lives in the future. Our classes should reflect that,” she commented about the new facilities.  Dr. Sidler has published several articles about technology and writing and recently co-edited a teacher’s resource book entitled Computers in the Composition Classroom.

In addition to her work with composition, Dr. Sidler is a Co-Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation grant, working with faculty from several disciplines at three different universities. The grant is funding educational projects about nanotechnology, the science of particles at the near-molecular level, for students at Auburn.  Along with a special section of Auburn’s Concepts of Science course, the grant team has produced several instructional modules for core courses and the Summer Bridge Program.  In the future, Dr. Sidler plans to publish research about the impact of writing on science education.

Jennifer Gillis, Pyschology

Jennifer Gillis, an assistant professor in Psychology, focuses her research on investigating multiple facets of interventions for children with ASD. Her current research activities include: 1) Improving methods of assessing the social skills deficits in children with ASD; 2) Understanding and improving screening practices for developmental delays, such as Autism in rural areas; and, 3)Examining parental stress and marital satisfaction for families with a child with an ASD.

She received grants from the Organization for Autism Research to study how attention and arousal influence social skills and from Auburn University’s Outreach office that enables her to start a diagnostic clinic for individuals with ASD and to assess the viability of a mobile diagnostic team using Telehealth Technology.

Jennifer received her B.A. in Psychology, M.A., and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Binghamton University (State University of New York). In 2006, she completed a clinical psychology internship at the Brown University Training Consortium. Currently, she is an assistant professor of psychology at Auburn University. Since 2003, Dr. Gillis holds a national certification in Behavior Analysis (issued by the BACB).

Jill Crystal, Political Science

Political Science Professor Dr. Jill Crystal was invited by the Istanbul Center for Culture and Dialogue (ICCD) for an 11-day dialogue trip through Turkey in June, 2007. The trip included meetings with religious, educational and cultural figures, dinners in the homes of Turkish families and visits to important religious, cultural and educational sites in Istanbul, Izmir, Antalya, Konya, and Cappadocia.

The goal of the ICCD is to promote closer relations and better understanding between Turkish and American communities. Dr. Crystal said that the trip deepened her understanding of culture and politics in both Europe and Asia. She intends to incorporate much of what she has learned into her course work, especially her class on Islam and politics.